Many companies analyze and manage field device sensor data and energy consumption individually and at a high cost. The standard architecture for such systems causes extremely slow data display, with page switching times of thirty or more seconds, leading to a poor user experience.
Data display may be designed on a site level, since that is where the controls exist, and therefore multi-site data integration may be difficult. User interface (UI) customization tools may be proprietary and specific to the system installed, resulting in the installing company doing all the UI development and customization for the end user.
Many companies with several types of field devices have difficulty polling sensor data or energy consumption information from each field device because each type of field device communicates differently. Current energy management software systems are often proprietary to the manufacturer's platform. Therefore, once the initial vendor decision is made, users often face high switching costs and cannot easily shop for competitively priced platforms due to system incompatibility.
Extensive and in-depth analysis of energy management data may be time consuming and difficult. Energy analytics may be done by a team of engineers, and may take months from the data generation time to be returned to the user.